Panici's long awaited E30

[Panici]

Jacked up the front of the e30 last night.

Bent the (unibody rail?) up under the driver's side floor.
I suspect my wet floorboards on that side have weakened the metal in that area. (Will be taking out carpet to inspect next week)


I guess I'll have to cut all of that out and weld in some new metal? I'll see how bad the rest of the floors are when I pull the carpets.










Also inspected brakes and bushings all around.

[payney8]

Top work mate. Glad to see one get saved instead of thrown in the too hard bin and wrecked.

[Panici]

The direction you're heading with this, I think it's going to turn out stunning! Subscribed!

Keep up the good work!

Thanks guys!
Once I'm done with my final exams in a few weeks, I'll have a lot more time to work on the car.


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After messing with the radio stuff today, I've decided to go a different direction. I'm no longer going to be using the factory headunit. It doesn't make sense if I'm only going to use the AUX input.

Most likely I'll be putting some VDO gauges in it's place. I already have ordered an oil pressure gauge (and the parts needed to properly remote mount the sender)



I've never built a car audio setup before, but I do know a little about audio and electricity. ;)
I'm planning to build a completely custom headunit/amp setup. I'll mount the controls either beside the gauges, or in a deleted OBC panel. The idea is to keep the look OEM without anything too out of place.

Ideally, I'd like to fit everything behind the empty headunit slot (maybe some behind the dash if I need more room). Probably will build enclosures for the bare boards.
Essentially I'm building a small, lightweight, and relatively powerful amplifier that I can integrate into the dash.

Across two amps, I'll have 4 channels. With 40W (rms) available per channel, I should be able to drive some decently powerful speakers. With the right ones, I won't need a separate subwoofer taking up space and adding weight.


Here's the parts I've just ordered.

• Tone and volume control board.
  • Plan is to de-solder the pots and mount them to the dash directly.
• 2x Class-D amplifier board.
  • 2 channel - 40w(rms) per channel. (@1% THD, with 6ohm loads. Amps can be driven down to 4ohms)
• Black aluminum pot knobs x10
  • May use plastic BMW knobs if these don't look right
• 3.5mm female panel jack
  • Going to tuck this somewhere hidden so I can plug MP3/iPod into it. When the cable is unplugged, there won't be any wires hanging around.
• 12v to 24v DC-DC boost converter (240w)
  • Power supply for Class-D amp
• RCA Ground loop isolator
• 50Kohm Linear Dual Taper pot (for front/rear balance control)

[Lake]

Keep up the good work!

[Zreberlcoe]

The direction you're heading with this, I think it's going to turn out stunning! Subscribed!

[Panici]

This is a picture of the firewall, behind the fusebox.
Should there be a gap here? Possibly water coming into interior here?






Window seals on doors are cracked and split. Maybe water is going inside doors and then inside interior?






Did some work in the audio department today. Found rear speakers completely blown. Labeled all radio wiring.

Pulled rear speakers out of e39 parts car. They sound great!
Not sure if i'm going to run them in free air with brackets (they're a little small), or try to graft their enclosures into the rear shelf.

[Panici]

I had very similar water leaks. Sunroof drains caused only about half of it....mine lived under a tree for a while, as I suspect yours did too (pine needles in engine bay). I used an air compressor to clear out sunroof drains, but still had a little water coming in front footwells through the cowl vents. The seal around the blower motor was rotted out, and the "elephant trunk" drain on the firewall was totally blocked. Water was pouring in through the rotted blower seal.

My elephant trunk was clear, but I suspect the blower motor seal may be partly to blame. I'll investigate further.

Thanks for the tip :)

[NoM54me]

I had very similar water leaks. Sunroof drains caused only about half of it....mine lived under a tree for a while, as I suspect yours did too (pine needles in engine bay). I used an air compressor to clear out sunroof drains, but still had a little water coming in front footwells through the cowl vents. The seal around the blower motor was rotted out, and the "elephant trunk" drain on the firewall was totally blocked. Water was pouring in through the rotted blower seal.

[Panici]

Just picked up a running '98 E39 528i parts car for $550cdn. Got an amazing deal! Around here an M52 by itself goes for about that much.

Plan is to swap the motor (M52B28 ) and transmission (ZF320) into my '86 E30, and sell the remaining parts/wheels/shell of the E39.
238,000km on the motor.

One cyl was down on compression when we did an initial cold compression test. Will have to re-test when motor is hot. The rest were all above average for this motor, with this many KM.

Front of motor
Cyl 1 - 225psi
Cyl 2 - 250psi
Cyl 3 - 250psi
Cyl 4 - 175psi dry (250psi when some oil was added, might be a bad/stuck ring)
Cyl 5 - 225psi
Cyl 6 - 250psi
Rear of motor


Developed a lifter/valve tick when I brought it home and warmed it up. Oil level is low, hopefully a change and fill will take care of it.
If not, i'll run some seafoam through the crankcase, that might free up the lifter.


Also, either the clutch slave needs to be filled/bled, or the clutch needs to be replaced.

[Panici]

Update on my leak situation.

Gorilla taped my sunroof off, and it looks like that is the majority of the water problem. Going to have to clean all of the drains out when the weather is nice. (I've heard compressed air and weed-eater line work well?)

• Passenger side front was mostly dry.
• Passenger side rear I couldn't tell, as I had the carpet propped up to dry.
• Drivers side front was very wet.
• Drivers side rear was dry.
• Trunk is leaking from taillights (they don't have gaskets)

[Panici]

-Quickly vacuumed interior. Also vacuumed up knocked out rust, and a bunch of pine needles from all over the car.

-Mounted rear bumper with some zipties. Need to make reinforcement plates for the pulled-through bolts. Also mounted bumper plastic side and top pieces. They all will need replacement hardware.

-Locating some aircraft paint stripper (aluminum safe) to get all the paint off of my metal bumpers.

-Plastic pieces have whats left of a bad paintjob on them. Suggestions for getting that off without ruining the plastic? Right now I'm thinking sanding is the way to go.







Taillight lens tape (temporary obviously)

[Panici]

-Ran half a can of seafoam through the intake manifold today. After letting it sit for 10 minutes, barely got any smoke. I guess this old M20B27 was pretty clean on the combustion side.

-Not sure if I want to risk running Seafoam in the crankcase. I've heard horror stories of it cleaning so well that the sludge blocks oil passages, and/or all your seals start to leak!

-Changed the oil to some fresh 20w-50. Used dino oil because it was on sale (and i'm not going to put premium stuff in this motor)
Got stuck with a FRAM filter, as they didn't carry Mobil1 filters in the right size.

-Still getting some misfiring. Will have to explore further.

-Filled powersteering reservoir. I've definitely got a leak somewhere.

-Gorilla taped my sunroof edges. If I don't have wet floorboards next time it rains, I'll know it's my sunroof/drains to blame.

-Going to look at a cheap e39 528i (for parts) later this week. Has the M52B28/ZF320 combo that i'd love to put into the e30. Also might have a set of e38 Style 5s on it.

[Panici]

After looking at a few wiring diagrams, I realized that the large cable going into the junction block is also +12v. The block was so dirty that it previously measured at 0v, and I thought it was a ground.

I dug in my multimeter probe, and got +12.xx volts. I then measured the smaller wire, and had +11.8x volts.
I knew both of these should be directly connected to the battery, and should have the same voltage.

Tore apart the trunk and found the fusible link. Sure enough, it was corroded, and came apart in my hands.

Replaced it with some 16ga wire (for now) and probed relays for +12v. Check.
Tested for fuel at motor. Check.
Tested for spark. Check.

Put the plugs in and the motor came to life!

It was quite smoky (burning off the ATF and light oil I had sitting in the cyls). After a few minutes, all the smoke disappeared, and the misfires are mostly gone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jc6dvslhPs



Couple points to mention.
-Brakes are very rusty. Probably will need to machine or replace rotors.
-Ebrake locks up the drivers side rear tire. Passenger side ebrake appears to brake little to no amount.
-All my transmission gears work, shifts relatively smoothly. Clutch seems good.
-Went full throttle a few times without problems. (Except such a low redline!)
-Power steering doesn't appear to be working. Fluid res is empty. Will fill it and go from there!
-Throttle cable is sticking a little.
-Exhaust leak from under the car.
-Brake light switch sticks on.






Also poked a few rusty spots into holes. Sprayed some rust paint, these will be patched with new metal.

Scraped and painted some rust on the bottom of the hood as well.

[Panici]

Yesterday, I blew out the ATF/oil that I had sitting in the cylinders (to clean/free them up after sitting for so long)

Good news is, the motor isn't locked up, and the starter works well!
Bad news is, I don't have spark (or fuel either, as I discovered previously)

Trunk is dry in the rain now, except for a little water coming in from the driver's side taillight.

Also found out that my floorboards are getting wet when it rains (front and rear). Passenger side is worse then drivers side. Briefly checked some of the pinch seam drains. I'll do a more thorough job this week.

[MR E30 325is]

oh me oh my!

'the harder the battle, the sweeter the victory!'

Keep up the good work. lots of stuff to clean and replace!